Spenser bewails the "ugly barbarism and brutish ignorance" of his times, and refers to the world. as "a den of wickedness, deformed with filth and foul iniquity. The anonymous author of Timon of Athens (1600) writes :-"Earth's worse than Hell; let Hell change place with Earth." Nash, in Summer's Last Will and Testament, published in the same year (1600), utters the same thought, "Earth is Hell, true Hell felicity compared with this world, this den of wolves." "I wish myself a beast," says Dekker, "because men are are so bad that beasts excel them in goodness." The author of Willobie & his Avisa (1594) bewails "this sinful age, that gives us beasts in shape of men. Marston in The Scourge of Villainy (1599) laments the "foul odious sin in which our swinish times lie wallowing." Plays written for the entertainment of such a rabble, emanating from such minds and produced amid environment so miry and impure, would, one would naturally expect, prove but sorry and obscene things. In place, however, of blasts from Hell, they bring with them, as we have perceived, airs from Heaven. The dramatists drew a very hard and fast line between Love and Lust. We find for instance Greene, a broken outcast who we are told by contemporaries was an inventor of monstrous oaths, a derider of all religions, a contemner of God and man, and an arch Atheist,' and who, "in theory and practice seems to have been a most perfect libertine," writing, 1 Biographica Dramatica. 1 Fly Lust as the deathsman of the soul and defile not the Temple of the Holy Spirit. (Groatsworth of Wit) 1592. On the question of Marriage the views of the stage players are more elevated and less earthy than those expressed in our Book of Common Prayer. Wedlock.... is a pattern of celestial peace. SHAKESPEARE (I Henry VI v. 5.) 1623. Blessed marriage, the chain that links two holy [loves together That comes BEAUMONT & FLETCHER (Thierry IV. 1.) 1621. If love be holy; if that mystery of co-united hearts be sacrament. MARSTON (What you will 11. 1.) 1607. In violating marriage law You break a greater honour than yourself. ANON (Edward III. 11. 1.) 1596. Sacred love unites the knot of Gordian at the shrine of Jove. GREENE (Orlando Furioso) 1594. The sacrament of marriage. Bless, Heaven, this sacred gordian which let violence never untwine. WEBSTER (Malfi 1. 1.) 1616-1623. Whom God hath knit to thee tremble to lose. PEELE (David and Bathsheba) 1599. The Holy institution of Heaven ordaining marriage for proportioned minds. CHAPMAN (May Day 1. 1.) 1611. For love is a celestiall harmonie Of likely harts composed of starres concent, Which joyne together in sweete sympathie, To work each others joy and true content. SPENSER (Hymne in Honour of Beautie) 1616. The dramatists taught that man's Soul was a Divine Essence, not to be soaked away "in sensual lust and midnight bezzling. That immortal essence, that translated divinity and colony of God-the soul. SIR T. BROWNE (Religio Medici) 1635-1643. That divine part is soaked away in sin. In sensual lust and midnight bezzling. Rank inundation of luxuriousness Have tainted him with such gross beastliness That now the seat of that Celestial Essence Is all possessed with Naples pestilence. MARSTON (Scourge of Villainy) 1599. Have these souls? That for a good look and a few kind words part with their essence? BEAUMONT & FLETCHER (Queen of Corinth 1. 1.) 1618-1647. The sole essence of my soul. ANON (Locrine 1. 3.) 1595. The very essence of your soul. CHAPMAN (Widows Tears 1. 1.) 1612. The essence of my soul. GREENE (James IV.) 1598. He that should give essence to thy soul. She is my essence. PEELE (Alcazar) 1594. SHAKESPEARE (Two Gentlemen of Verona III. 1.) 1623. My essence and my being. HEYWOOD (Challenge for Beauty) 1636. One can only express a pious hope that the youths who thundered at the playhouses and fought for bitten apples appreciated the teaching, that man embodies in his soul the spiritual equivalent of every outward object. The ancients not improperly styled him [man] a microcosm or little world within himself. BACON (Wisdom of Ancients) 1609. To call ourselves a microcosm or little world I thought it only a pleasant trope of rhetoric till my near judgment and second thoughts told me there was a real truth therein. SIR T. BROWNE (Religio Medici) 1635-1643. I am a microcosm or little world. Ibid. I am an absolute microsmos, a petty world of myself. LYLY (Endymion IV. 2.) 1591. The perfect analogy between the world and men. FORD & DEKKER (Suns Darling) 1624-1657. The little world of man. This little world of man. Ibid. TOURNEUR (Atheists Tragedy 111. 3.) 1611. I love this kingly little world (embracing him) How sweet he looks. The king and rain. GREENE (Looking Glass) 1594. strives in his little world of man to outscorn the to-and-fro conflicting wind SHAKESPEARE (Lear 11. 1.) 1608. My microcosm. SHAKESPEARE (Coriolanus 11. 1.) 1623. I have a world within me. MIDDLETON & ROWLEY (Spanish Gypsy v.111.) 1653. This little world. MASSINGER (The Guardian III. 6.) 1633-1655. Fair Gratiana, beauty's little world! CHAPMAN (All Fools 111. 1.) 1605. A better essence than is the gorgeous world even of a man. MARSTON (Malcontent 1. 3.) 1604. Look on that little world-the twofold man. ANON (Dr. Dodypol) 1600. In this little Kingdom of the Soul, it is insisted that man should bridle his baser affections: Employing the predominant affections of fear and hope for the suppressing and bridling the rest. For, as in the government of states, it is sometimes necessary to bridle one faction with another, so it is in the government within. BACON (Advancement of Learning) 1605. Better conquest never can'st thou make Than arm thy constant and thy nobler parts Against these giddy, loose, suggestions. SHAKESPEARE (King John III. 1.) 1623. Bis vincit, qui se vincit in victoria. He conquers twice who, upon victory, overcomes [himself. BACON (Ornamenta Rationalia) Shall the large limit of fair Brittainy |